


Beyond

by Morbane



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: Constructive Criticism Welcome, Crossover, Gen, Mentors, Mythical Beings & Creatures, crossovering treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-04
Updated: 2015-09-04
Packaged: 2018-04-19 00:38:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4726241
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Morbane/pseuds/Morbane
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A very alternate version of how a 14-year-old came to be the tribute of a Career district.</p><p>And how Mags helped him win.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Beyond

**Author's Note:**

  * For [isquinnabel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/isquinnabel/gifts).



It was bad form to catch the eyes of the volunteering tributes as the names were read out. Mags chose to survey the eighteen-year-olds generally, to watch their relief at surviving the last Reaping that risked their lives, and when name-call was answered with counter-call, she could look as the crowd looked, and give the volunteer a moment that felt more theirs for being more scripted.

"Ellen Cooper," Zerelda, the Capitol escort, announced.

" _I_ volunteer." Bridget Bain, shorter and stockier than Ellen, had no trouble establishing a presence for herself. As Mags looked on, Bridget looked first at Ellen, and smiled, then moved toward the stage.

"Good show," Zerelda said, smiling appreciatively at her. 

"I'm starting as I mean to go on," Bridget quipped, smiling back.

Zerelda was competent, but she had a vindictive streak that went beyond Capitol self-absorption. Mags would have to warn Bridget about Zerelda.

Zerelda motioned Bridget to her place and drew out a name for the District Four male tribute.

"Finnick Odair!"

"I volunteer—"

"No."

Mags looked sharply across at the apparent tribute. She caught a tiny, incredulous smirk on his face. It was as if he couldn't quite believe what he'd done.

There was a murmur of confusion. Finnick cut through it. "I am chosen as tribute. I will not cede my place."

Now Mags allowed herself to look at the boy she had expected to mentor. Sammell was standing quite still, his face pale with shock. If one happened to view the coverage later, without sound, it might look as though he had just been unwillingly chosen - instead of being chosen for.

"Well!" Zerelda said, after a pause. "So much courage coming from one district! Come up, then, young Finnick."

Mags judged he was fifteen at the oldest. The smirk was gone when he reached the stage. He shook hands with Bridget warily. And they might as well be wary of each other. There was little hope of presenting a unified front.

* * *

It didn't take long to get to the bottom of Finnick's story. He was already in training. In four years, he might have been sanctioned by his trainers to climb to the Reaping stage. Except, from certain hesitations and evasions as he explained himself, Mags thought he'd doubted his chances of making the final selection. So when the chance was delivered to him, he had taken it. As impulsive as only a teenage boy raised on the promise of glory could be. 

It wasn't that impulsiveness that made Mags agree with his implied assessment that he would not have been allowed to volunteer. Finnick Odair was too damn pretty, and he looked older than his age.

District Four would not become District One, she vowed.

But then again, she'd said that about District Two.

In District Two, there were no visibly apprehensive eighteen-year-olds, or younger for that matter, clustered before the Reaping stage. In District Two, children were secure in the knowledge that someone else would volunteer for them. District Two had adapted to its circumstances over the last half-century. Adapted, but not overcome.

Considering Finnick and Bridget, Mags recognized in herself all of the impulses of District Two that gave her the most misgivings. She had originally planned to be Bridget's mentor, with the younger Victor, Jenna, mentoring Sammell; but that had never been communicated to the candidates, and when they had conferred after the Reaping, Jenna had agreed on the switch. Finnick was going to be a difficult case. Finnick needed her. Conversely, there wasn't much that Jenna could teach Bridget. The switch indubitably helped Finnick and hurt Bridget. One part of Mags said that that was unfair; that Bridget had played by the rules, and nothing should be taken away from someone who did that, in a Capitol game.

But to put too much store in playing by the rules was to accept the context in which they had been developed. It was not possible to be fair. It was neither wise nor just to guarantee fairness to tributes. It was hollow, she felt, to offer tributes honour in trade for their sacrifice. That was what District Two did.

District Four's official opinion on Career tributes had varied widely in the same half-century that the practice had become entrenched in One and Two.

Finnick happened to have been at an appropriate age when the idea had had a resurgence. His older brothers were already accomplished fishermen when he'd been accepted for training. Here, thus, was a boy who saw nothing strange about a child volunteering for those older than himself.

* * *

The first day of their journey from District Four to the Capitol, Finnick joked easily with Jenna and Mags, and essayed jokes with Bridget a second and a third time after she shot him down.

(Zerelda took Bridget's side, at some whim Mags couldn't decipher. As was sometimes necessary, she ignored Zerelda.)

On the second night, she didn't go to bed, but fixed herself strong coffee, and laid out the ingredients for a mug of hot chocolate, and waited until she heard Finnick crying.

She had expected the bravado to break at this point. It wasn't just the strain of being a fourteen-year-old who had defied his entire district to do something arguably crazy. It was the distance that the train had travelled at this point: the distance from the ocean. On her first ride in this train, it had been unbearable. She had begun her journey to the Capitol with more complex hopes and fears; by the time she had arrived at the arena, she had promised herself she would win through, if only to see the sea again.

It still wrenched at her. She brought Finnick his mug, and settled down beside him with her own, and modelled for him the need for and acknowledgement of comfort. 

She let comfort bleed into the silence.

"Finnick?" she asked at last, "tell me about what you're hoping for, after you've won."

He glanced up at her. This clearly wasn't the question he had been expecting.

"I kind of hadn't," he confessed. "Win and then figure it out, right?"

"Wrong," she corrected. He blinked. "You know how to punch, right?" He blinked again at the apparent non-sequitur, but nodded. She saw he was getting a little sleepy.

"Do you punch _at_ the target, or punch _through_ the target?"

"Oh," he said. "Punch through."

"There we go," Mags said. "I'd hate to think you didn't know that. Otherwise, I'm not sure you could take _me_ on." He laughed, as she had meant for him to. Tomorrow she'd remind him that several other children had taken her on, once, one after the other, and failed. Tomorrow it would be easier to think about. 

Daylight could make those things easier to think about, or company, or small unexpected joys, but they became no easier year after year, because year after year she told children the same things, and then added those children to the pain of the memories.

Finnick seemed destined to become one of those memories. And to improve his odds at all, she must first convince herself to bet on him.

She would have to take a risk.

"Let me tell you a story," Mags said.

He shifted, alert to possible condescension. "What, a bedtime story?"

"A story," Mags said mildly. "As the story of the Districts' rebellion is a story. As the story of the Capitol's generosity is a story."

"Hm," he said, cynical. 

The cynicism stayed for a while. These were stories about the sea. About a girl who had wished for a boat and clear skies, and got her wish for a day. They were stories about people who had sailed out into the west as far as they could go - and that got Finnick's attention, because he could find easy holes to pick in the story. Water and provisions would only last so long. How could they justify wasting a ship that could be used for fishing for people back in the District? And why did they think they could reach the edge of the world?

"Every world has edges," Mags said. "Even round ones."

He squinted at her. "All worlds are round."

"Not all."

She added dragons to the margins of the story, howling clouds, and islands with golden wells. He was fidgeting, awaiting his moment to ask what her point was.

She outlasted him. He fell asleep before he could question the story. 

The day was spent with Jenna and Bridget, on fierce analysis of arenas, tactics, and strategies.

The next night, she told him about Telmarines, and how they had gone from this world and returned.

The next day, they arrived in the Capitol. 

"You have nereid blood," she told him on their first night in the Capitol. "There are still traces of it in our people, and you have the purest I've seen. It hurts you to be away from the water."

He laughed with her, cautiously. He was still willing to believe that this was a metaphor, a game she was playing with him that would make sense. Worse than the Capitol games in some ways, because she required a better semblance of subscription, of belief. Practice for the Capitol games, perhaps. Perhaps that was what he thought she was doing.

That was the last story; the final days were filled with practical training, discussing who to ally with and when to break an alliance, drilling him in the basics of survival in habitats and weather conditions he had never experienced.

But for his token in the arena, she gave him a dragon scale.


End file.
